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Balconeers and travelers may think over the same area, yet their problems differ. Thus (for instance) in relation to evil,
the spirit, that is, that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God.
It is not a critique of new paths, except indirectly, but rather a straightforward recall to old ones,
Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.
We are told that “God-talk,” as Christians have historically practiced it, is a refined sort of nonsense, and knowledge about God is strictly a nonentity. Types of teaching which profess such knowledge are written off as outmoded—“Calvinism,” “fundamentalism,” “Protestant scholasticism,” “the old orthodoxy.” What are we to do? If we postpone our journey till the storm dies down, we may never get started at all.
God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation. 2. God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections in all that he does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore him. 3. God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to bless them accordingly. 4. God is triune; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the work of salvation is one
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The very greatness of the subject matter will intoxicate us, and we shall come to think of ourselves as a cut above other Christians because of our interest in it and grasp of it; and we shall look down on those whose theological ideas seem to us crude and inadequate and dismiss them as very poor specimens.
Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself better. Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are.
It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God.
Not many of us, I think, would ever naturally say that we have known God.
They never brood on might-have-beens; they never think of the things they have missed, only of what they have gained.
A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him.
The question is not whether we are good at theology, or “balanced” (horrible, self-conscious word!) in our approach to problems of Christian living.
It is simply that those who know their God are sensitive to situations in which God’s truth and honor are being directly or tacitly jeopardized, and rather than let the matter go by default will force the issue on men’s attention and seek thereby to compel a change of heart about it—even at personal risk.
People who know their God are before anything else people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God’s glory come to expression is in their prayers.
“smilingly washed their hands of the consequences.”
First, we must recognize how much we lack knowledge of God. We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts.
It is those who have sought the Lord Jesus till they have found him—for the promise is that when we seek him with all our hearts, we shall surely find him—who can stand before the world to testify that they have known God.
Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.
But if instead he starts at once to take us into his confidence, and tells us frankly what is in his mind on matters of common concern, and if he goes on to invite us to join him in particular undertakings he has planned, and asks us to make ourselves permanently available for this kind of collaboration whenever he needs us, then we shall feel enormously privileged, and it will make a world of difference to our general outlook. If life seemed unimportant and dreary hitherto, it will not seem so anymore,
knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart.
knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.
But knowing Jesus Christ still remains as definite a relation of personal discipleship as it was for the Twelve when he was on earth. The Jesus who walks through the gospel story walks with Christians now, and knowing him involves going with him, now as then.
a simple Bible reader and sermon hearer who is full of the Holy Spirit will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Savior than a more learned scholar who is content with being theologically correct. The reason is that the former will deal with God regarding the practical application of truth to his life, whereas the latter will not.
it is constantly needful to stress that God does not exist for our comfort or happiness or satisfaction, or to provide us with “religious experiences,” as if these were the most interesting and important things in life. It is also necessary to stress that anyone who, on the basis of “religious experiences,” “says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him”
But, for all this, we must not lose sight of the fact that knowing God is an emotional relationship, as well as an intellectual and volitional one,
What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.
There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend,
“idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images.”
We were made in his image, but we must not think of him as existing in ours.
God did not show them a visible symbol of himself, but spoke to them; therefore they are not now to seek visible symbols of God, but simply to obey his Word.
Do I look habitually to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as showing me the final truth about the nature and the grace of God?
then I can know that I truly worship the true God, and that he is my God, and that I am even now enjoying eternal life, according to our Lord’s own definition,
The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man—that
The story is told dispassionately and without comment, but no thoughtful reader can help shuddering at the picture of callousness and degradation that it draws.
“Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man . . . perfect God, and perfect man . . . who although he be God and man: yet he is not two, but one Christ; one, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the manhood into God.”
When Paul talks of the Son as having emptied himself and become poor, what he has in mind, as the context in each case shows, is the laying aside not of divine powers and attributes but of divine glory and dignity,
But if, in the face of this, advocates of the kenosis theory should deny that these attributes are incompatible with true humanity in heaven, what reason can they give for believing this incompatibility to have existed on earth?
not that he was wholly bereft of divine knowledge and power, but that he drew on both intermittently, while being content for much of the time not to do so.
The impression, in other words, is not so much one of deity reduced as of divine capacities restrained.
So Jesus’ limitation of knowledge is to be explained, not in terms of the mode of the Incarnation, but with reference to the will of the Father for the Son while on earth.
It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas.
Nor is it the spirit of those Christians—alas, they are many—whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.
Another Comforter—yes, because Jesus was their original Comforter, and the newcomer’s task was to continue this side of his ministry.
In the Old Testament, God’s word and God’s Spirit are parallel figures. God’s word is his almighty speech; God’s Spirit is his almighty breath. Both phrases convey the thought of his power in action.
But the average Christian, deep down, is in a complete fog as to what work the Holy Spirit does.
The answer to this question is no—because Christ sent the Holy Spirit to them, to teach them all truth and so save them from all error, to remind them of what they had been taught already and to reveal to them the rest of what their Lord meant them to learn.
To the apostles, he testified by revealing and inspiring, as we saw. To the rest of us, down the ages, he testifies by illuminating:
